A series about Arkham Asylum has a lot to live up to.  Love him, hate him, or be indifferent to him; Grant Morrison’s Arkham series is one of the most well-written, cleverly conceptialized stories in the Batman mythos.  And Slott’s Arkham: Living Hell, wherein a criminal chooses to go to Arkham to escape jail time (hint: bad idea), is nearly as good.  So this title really needed to bring it.

The first few pages did not convince me.  Too much interior monologue for my liking, and a lot of cliche character interaction, though I did enjoy his being talk at by Zsaz.  It’s only when he descends into The Hole that the story started to grab me.  The introduction of three characters who, at face value (pardon the pun), seem like trite, contrivances.  But they’re intriguing contrivances.  Then comes some Arkham back story, the tale of Black Glove and Black Mask’s involvement, and then we have an awesome set up for a storyline.

It is only now, as I type this that I realized this isn’t the opening part of a series, but a one shot.  And that’s a damned shame.  Love to see how they pull this into the upcoming bat titles, though.